sustainability

Next Generation of Pioneers

There is a slight passion in everyone to be sustainable. In most instances, we try to be sustainable with our money and how we budget for the future. It’s quite nerve-racking to think that when we do this, we think about the short-term, which can even be as long as a couple of decades, for example getting a mortgage for a house. Others have a different magnitude of passion. Some individuals in the world try to push themselves in respect to sustainability and can even become pioneers in thinking differently. They would try to think outside of the box and try to make their ideas flourish by telling others either by protests or by presentations.

Here is an example of a young man thinking like a pioneer. He has used his personal passion of diving to come up with an ingenious idea to remedy the problems he encountered during his diving sessions. And he is only 19 years old and this is his presentation.

He has found a way to remove plastic from the oceans in a unique way which most people could not imagine, as well as making it profitable. There would be a few businesses who will invest in this man, but most likely for the wrong reasons. He could be employed by an oil company who would use his invention to capture spilt oil which can occur at any time or in any area of the world. He could also be employed by government, who are likely to use his idea for the right uses.

The Problem

There is a major problem when it comes to sustainability. It’s each to their own. There is never or rarely collective thinking to reduce the impact of humans on this planet. The fact that people all over the world are using different types of plastic on a daily basis but are not thinking what happens once its left the big bin outside their homes.This plastic has most likely have been dumped into rivers, lakes and into oceans and it is mostly to have been done on purpose. And yet this young man has found a solution to this problem, even though it shouldn’t be his problem to solve.

Businesses blame lack of governmental influence when it comes to these sensitive topics. Business would say government because businesses too need to be sustainable, they need to sustain their profits to appease investors. Governments on the other hand cannot afford to keep their environmental policies and investments intact for long periods of time, and this is because of politics. Political parties change on average every 4 years, and you can’t make change in that time. Hell, it’s even hard to change things during 8 years in office. When a new party comes into power, the first thing to change is environmental policies.

Tony Abbott winning the general election for Australia in late 2013 shows this will be the case. The previous government had introduced a controversial carbon tax on emissions which is likely to be scrapped by this new government. The only way in which policies would be kept indefinitely in law is with a communist based government. China has had subsidies for solar panel production and has caused controversy with Western manufacturers as they are finding it harder to sell their less efficient solar panels. The Obama administration has pushed to disallow new power plants using coal, which has angered the coal industry as expected, but has not had a strong push on an alternative toward producing new energy sources. The best example for renewable energy is California which is just a state pushing for policies on solar panel installations.

What next?

It is very hard to deny the fact that the planet is undergoing problems due to the massive amount of pollution which is being put into both the air and the oceans. A strong legal position should be presented by various governments, particularly the G20 nations, in order to place a strong emphasis on sustainability. Corporations should lend a helping hand also by improving their own environmental procedures with a top down culture with continuous monitoring to ensure effectiveness. This recommendation is based on the fact that is can cost lots of money to get started, however the current cost is much less when compared to potential future costs which could be infinite as the damage can be irreversible.